The Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform has a new name… sorta

Well its still the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, but we can’t shorten it. You know you have made an impact when multi-million dollar defense firms start threatening. We received a letter from a law firm representing AeroVironment, Inc. stating that the abbreviation for our project, the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, infringes on their trademarked “Wasp Micro Air Vehicle”. Now White and I are scratching our heads as to how consumers would be confused in this case considering that this project, done as a proof of concept by hobbyists in a garage, can’t be purchased in whole or in part, but that is beside the point. Given the fact that White and I don’t plan on selling anything connected to this project and couldn’t sell it if we wanted to, the prudent thing to do is to comply with the requested change and not refer to our project by the shortened abbreviation. After all, a trademark is a trademark…

Snippet from Trademarkia.com

This is a brand page for the WASP trademark, which is owned by AeroVironment, Inc. in Monrovia, CA, 91016. Write a review about a product or service associate with this WASP trademark. Or, contact the owner AeroVironment, Inc. of the WASP trademark through the Legal
Correspondent listed with the U.S. for all licensing, use, and/or questions related to the WASP trademark.

Status Update! On Friday, August 5, 2011, status on the WASP trademarkchanged to NEW APPLICATION – RECORD INITIALIZED NOT ASSIGNED TO EXAMINER.

On Tuesday, August 02,
2011, a U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for WASP. This trademark is owned by AeroVironment, Inc., Monrovia, CA 91016.The USPTO has given the WASP trademark serial number of 85387569.The current federal status of this trademark filing is NEW APPLICATION –
RECORD INITIALIZED NOT ASSIGNED TO EXAMINER. The correspondent listed for WASP is … of MICHA…, 1445 …, SIMI VALLEY, CA 93065-2827. The WASP trademark is filed in the category of Vehicles and Products for locomotion by land, air or water. The description provided to the USPTO for WASP is Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

As you can see, AeroVironment clearly applied for their trademark on August 2, 2011. If you remember, White and I spoke at Black Hat about our little project on August 3, 2011.

So to be clear, neither White nor I have any affiliation with AeroVironment, Inc. or their products. Our project, the Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform, is in no way
associated with AeroVironment Inc., or derived from AeroVironment’s “Wasp Micro
Air Vehicle” and is a completely separate proof of concept effort which is not
for sale in any way. We are hereby announcing that we will be ceasing the use of the abbreviated term for Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platform and will here-to-fore refer to our project as “Vespid” so as not to confuse consumers (the US military) into thinking that our garage built drone which they can’t buy is akin to a small, mass produced US military device which costs $50,000 dollars per unit.

We are looking forward to continuing to evolve our UAVs under “Project Vespid”.